I'm kindeve a reading dork.  I've always read.  I can't remember learning how to read but some of the first books I remember enjoying are simple ones.  One of the first books I remember LOVING was "Are You My Mother?"  It's about a little chicken that wanders around asking animals, "Are you my mother?"  I also remember really enjoying "Perfect the Pig."  We had a lot of books at home, some of them I have taken and added to the library of my children.  I read a lot and as I got older, I remember loving "Where the Red Fern Grows" (I totally cried my eyes out, every time I read it) and "Anne of Green Gables" (I love that her dad got her a dress with "puffed" sleeves even though Marilla told him not to.)  I read every Baby Sitter's Club book from #1 - 100something.  I had them all nicely lined up on my pretty white bookshelf.  Each one of them was stamped with my personalized stamp.  Later, we sold them in a garage sale to the mother of a would be friend during high school.  The first adult book I read was Jurassic Park, read in the 7th grade.  My dad told me I would like it - and I loved it.  (I also predicted that it would be made into a movie.)  I went through author phases - Dean Koontz, Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, John Irving, and even RL Stine.

So it goes without saying that one of my most favoritest gifts ever is the Nook my parents got me for COLLEGE GRADUATION!  (That's right, I am a graduate.  I have a diploma.  Suck it Mark!  I did graduate, it just took me a long time!) I am constantly singing it's praises.  I love that I can whip it out on the beach (yes, I did that!) and I don't have to worry about the pages flying around in the wind. I can also have my choice of thousands of books with me - and not be weighed down by a heavy backpack trying to hold them all.

Also, I love that you can "accessorize" it!  (Mention that outside of my blog and I will deny saying it.  It makes me seem a bit ridiculous.)  Kate Spade makes cases for it - awesome ones.  AND you can replace the dull gray back with snazzy colors like lime green - which happens to perfectly match my lime green and turquoise Kate Spade case. It says "once upon a time on the front" and "happily ever after" on the back - I love that!  Every girl is a fairytale princess - age doesn't take that away.

Anyway, I love the Nook.  It's fabulous.  It's easy to use.  It has nice lines.  It's light weight, even though it currently holds 25+ books.

The only thing that sucks about the Nook is the Lend Me feature.  Being able to loan books is kindeve a big selling point for Barnes and Noble.  How cool is that!?  Some of the books I buy can be loaned to a friend for 14 days.  Pretty cool.  What sucks is that it doesn't work easily.  Not as easily as they advertise on their webpage.  I have successfully loaned ONE book to Holly.  She tried to loan me a book and it led to one of the most infuriating telephone conversations I've ever had.

First, let me brief you on a few things.

1. I spent something like FOUR years working telephone customer service in one of the shittiest departments for customer service.  Billing.  I said it then, and I still say it now - no one calls the billing department to thank them for the monthly billing.  Every call was someone bitching.  I am still amazed at the idiots that would call in pissed because the $21.95 AOL charge had been showing up on their credit card statement for 2 years and they just noticed it.  Anyway, I'm good with people and I'm nice on the phone (it's easier for me to pass judgement when you can't see my eyes rolling out of my head!)  The time I spent working customer service has given me lifelong respect for anyone in customer service - and that isn't just people on the phone.  It extends to waiters, cashiers, etc.  I am ALWAYS extra nice because I know how awful it is to be on the other side.
2. I am the Queen of Passive-Agressiveness.  Just ask Bill.  :)  I don't fight.  I will avoid confrontation like it's the plague.  And if I do get backed into a corner and a fight ensues, it is guaranteed that I will lock up and not say anything.  It's a defense mechanism - I've always been like that.  I assume that if I don't say anything, you will eventually run out of things to yell about. 

Monday I called Barnes and Noble for Nook support - problems with the Lend me feature.  I only had two problems and they seem pretty simple.  I sent Holly a loan request for a book and she never received it.  I couldn't resend the request because it was showing as "on loan" in my library.  And she sent me a request, I was able to receive it and accept it into my ebook library but I couldn't get it to download to my Nook.  I tried for 30 minutes Sunday night and for a few minutes prior to placing the call.

The Barnes and Noble Tech-Support Asshole (BNTSA) wasted 45 minutes trying to tell me that I wasn't able to download the book to my Nook because my shipping address was wrong, I didn't have valid credit card information saved in my profile, I wasn't getting a wifi connection, I wasn't getting a 3g connection, and finally that my device wasn't registered correctly.  He didn't listen to me when I told him NONE of these things were the problem because I was able to purchase and download a book as recently as last week.  So he suggested unregistering and registering.  This immediately prompted me to ask, "Am I going to lose any of the data on my Nook?"  He said no, everything would still be there.  So I went through more of his procedure to unregister and reregister my Nook.  And guess what! 

It deleted EVERYTHING.

This is when I started to get a little bit irritated.  It was obvious the guy had no idea how to troubleshoot my problem.  He was grasping straws and I told him as much as I expressed my unhappiness about losing all of my books.  When I tried to retrieve my library, I continued to get the same error message that I received when I tried to download the loaned book.  He told me it must be a system error and that I should call back in two hours.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?  

I told him that was completely unacceptable.  I spent 45 minutes on the phone with him, he deleted everything, couldn't recover it, and I needed to call back in two hours because his incompetent BNTSA ass couldn't fix my two original problems and now my third (and much more important) problem.  He continued to tell me I needed to call back, I continued to tell him that was unacceptable.  He said that he had gone through all of the procedures that his manager told him to try.  So I asked to speak with this manager.  He said the manager wasn't available.  I said I would gladly wait.  He said I couldn't.  So I asked if there was someone else that I could speak with that could address the problem.  He said no.  This is when he started to tell me that I needed to "calm down" and that he wasn't going to put me on the phone with anyone if I was "irate."

This is where I started to get irate. 

(Reference #1 above.)  I don't get mad with reps.  It's a shitty job and they are just reading scripts and doing what they are told.  I was by no means out of control, raising my voice, or even irate. I'm just not that person that yells.  I most definately don't yell at people over the phone.  I don't say mean things because what's the point?  BNTSA just accused me of being two things that are sooooo not true!!  That infuriated me - so I turned on my extra sweet condescending voice and calmly explained to the BNTSA that it was unacceptable for him to tell me to call back after he deleted everything and was unable to recover.  He replied that I needed to calm down or he was going to flag me in the system as a "customer unwilling to follow procedure."  WTF!  It was his bullshit procedure that led me to the problem.  He wanted me to call back because he was trying to cover up his inability to help me by calling it a "system problem."  Sorry dude, I've been there and played those games with customers.  It's not going to work on me.

I resolved the problem by hanging up on him. 

I realize that was a very immature thing to do but I couldn't keep having that discussion with him.  It's not my fault he was incompetent!  All I wanted was someone that was competent and could fix my problem.  That doesn't seem like too much to ask of a "tech support" department.  I called back and spent 25 minutes on the phone with a nice girl.  We didn't resolve any of my three problems but I had to go.  The kids were getting restless and I couldn't stay on the phone any longer.  She suggested that I bring it into a store for assistance.  I had planned to do it this weekend but miraculously my library showed back up tonight.  I have probably tried 15 times since I ended the second call, and as I was sitting there telling Bill, "I don't even know why I am trying.  I've tried 12 times already and it didn't work."  Viola!  My library is back!  I am so happy!!

I am just sad that the BNTSA left a sour taste in my mouth re: the Nook.  I will still talk it up to friends but I will no longer mention the lend me feature.  That and their customer service is crap.